What does 'cold' mean? What does 'warm' mean?


Aside from the 8 year old 'hey go open a window' replies; explain a 'cold' sounding cable? A 'warm' sounding amp?

Moreover: do we all assume these are terms we universally nod our heads to in agreement, whatever they are? 
zufan

Showing 5 responses by mahgister

Warm: my metaphorical hand... where they may go in dream but must not go in reality for the time being.... 🙃
You are not alone, rejoice! 😊

But audio experience cannot be reduced to these qualifications....They are too gross...Audio experience is linked to the more deep question : Is the recording of this piano timbre like my audio system render it to my ears, in my room acoustic, is this piano timbre natural ? Neither cold nor warm, just right and more neutral than not ,and natural like in real life experience?

This is the question....

Happy New Year geof3....
Cold and warm are subjectively attributed to sound but anyway very real experience of perceived sound phenomena....

It is a characterisation of the musical timbre of a specific instrument playing in a specific room from a specific audio system, coming also from a specific recording room, which may be perceived wrongly in two different directions of the spectrum frequencies, because of bad electronical design from the recording gear or/and from the listening gear or from very bad rooms embeddings or from the 2...

But People in general prefer between 2 wrongs the least wrong one or the least agressive one, then in general the warm sound is prefered and associated with heart and body, the cold one with the brain . ... Then warm qualify something more human; cold, something more artificial...

But if the audio system is a good one, turntable or dac, S.S. or tubes; if the audio system is rightfully embedded in the house/room, the rendering of the musical specific timbre of an instrument and his perception will be very good, then relatively neutral, nor warm nor cold, because the timbre is not only, a colored-frequencies phenomenon, it is mainly a time-timing- of many sound aspects-events in a specifically acoustically designed recording and listening rooms...

A good room, a recording one or a listening one, must be the more neutral possible for frequencies perception spectrum then the complex timing of events that constitue timbre will be rightly perceived...


Subjective description of a complex audio event for the ears, which is most of the times ascribed to a cause that is the wrong culprit...Too much warm or too much cold for example are perceived and submit to an analysis of the reasons why this is so?



Genrerally people accuse one of these 2 couples....

Analog/digital recording, Tube/S.S., Turntable/dac etc

A naturalness of timbre instrument CANNOT be warm nor cold, except through a defective audio mechanical, electrical and acoustical embeddings...Timbre is neutral neither cold nor warm...Some instrument are subectively perceived colder or warmer compared to each other but their specific TIMBRE is neither cold nor warm by definition of what the timbre objectively is ( go to wikipedia)

Any one of these couples, Analog/digital,Tube/S.S. or turntable/dac, if they are rightly embedded can give a natural timbre rendition...

The only exception is a very bad design in amplifier, speakers or dac or turntable...